Have you ever wondered about the happiness and fulfillment that comes from being a leader? Most of what we talk about here and most of what. you find in leadership guidance and coaching is how to deal with the problems and challenges of being a leader.

This is natural and really just a fact of life. There are only garages for broken cars, and most doctors in Western medicine only treat people with health problems.

But Mike, Shaun and I have talked about the positive parts of leadership guidance completely missing in today’s world. While this may be true for many messages in the media in general, we are going to start to add positive commentary to the mix.

Spoiler alert: the positives aren’t in getting a company car, the right to talk over someone in a meeting without repercussion or a raise. Undoubtably some of the life benefits of being a leader are real, but we will discuss the meaningful aspect.

Our answers to the question:

MM: “Happiness in leadership comes from focusing on the process, not the outcome.”

SP: “Leaders will find happiness in the place that they least expect it.”

DF: “Happiness comes by voluntarily and intentionally taking responsibility to help those people around you.”

Quotable:

MM: A bad process is one that is singularly focused on we have to chase this one thing.

MM: “How can you really be successful at something when you don’t actually enjoy what you do?”

SP: “Purpose is the precursor to happiness, and your purpose can’t be just this number in this quarter.”

SP: “We all want to get to that big moment, but that moment is years in the making.”

SP: “If you have purpose in your life, you have a chance at happiness. If you don’t have purpose, you have no chance.”

DF: “The best way I can describe what type of responsibility that gives happiness in addition to the hard deadlines of business is that you know, you know the things that you can do. Look at the people around you and figure out what you can do that would be helpful to them.”

DF: “As a leader, you probably have a fairly good idea of what you can do and how to do that, so start there and do that.”